09/15/1975
IWDM Study Library
Ministers Meeting
Pt. 4

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
[applause]
Speaker 1: In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful [Arabic language ] We first have to say to our brothers, distinguished guests here today from India and Pakistan, we welcome you [Arabic language] we welcome you and when you are here, you at home, the Nation of Islam was established to be a part of the vast great nation of Islam all over the world, we have been moving in that direction and now we have gotten our house in shape, and we want the world to know that we are part that vast nation.
[applause]
We are very thankful to Allah that he has blessed us to be honored today with their presence, and it's a great sign in this. We have one brother from India and one brother from Pakistan, India and Pakistan had to fight each other to exist. Pakistan had to fight India in order to come into existence and to remain in existence, but what you see here, he is a brother from India and a brother from Pakistan. [laughs]
[applause]
We pray, Allah, that soon all India will be Islam and inshallah, we never know what Allah has in his great plan, things could happen suddenly. No one knew that this would happen so suddenly in America, that thousands of black people in America who were Christians and who were the farthest away from the pious life would suddenly embrace Islam and accept to be identified with the millions, the 800 millions of Muslims all over the world and would accept the one true and living G-d, the Creator Himself, the Originator of the heavens and earth as their G-d and the only G-d and would accept prophet Muhammad to whom the Holy Quran was revealed as the universal prophet. Who would have believed that we would come to that so soon, but it has happened and we believe that soon Islam will be the religion of the whole earth.
We don't expect that every single individual will confess to Islam, but we believe that a majority all over the world will soon come into Islam, Inshallah. Again, brother ministers, I want to say that we have really been treated today, we receive a treat, and we know ourselves that as a family, we were destroyed. The first thing that slavery went after to destroy was our family, they wanted to destroy the family strength and that shows us that this world that wanted to enslave us, that did enslave us, they knew where the strength of the people were. The strength of the people are in their family unity and their family bonds and they had to destroy those bonds before they could successfully reduce us to animals, work animals.
Now, thanks to Allah, we have come into Islam and we were taught by a great man, a master teacher, Master Fard Muhammad, that we were brothers of Muslims all over the world, that we were not alone here in America. Master Fard Muhammad says, that you have many, many Muslim brothers and sisters all over the world and he told us that we were once Muslims ourselves. That's a fact now, we are reading now, the western people are writing that many of the slaves that they brought here were brought from Islamic life and they have, the Muslims name. One is Omar Said, and there are others, there are many others now that we are reading about in the history that white people are writing, Christian people are writing that many of the slaves that were brought here, were brought from Muslim life. We know that the strength of Africa, during the traffic of slavery from Africa here was not pagan, it was not Christian, it was Islam.
Master Fard Muhammad, he recognized this and he came here, and he identified us as lost people, people lost from our home, people lost from our land and our people and our religion because many of us have been lost from the religion Islam. That's why we refer to this group as the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in America. We don't mean that this is a new, a separate or a different Nation of Islam, but this body here represents the lost members from Islam.
If some of us descended from pagan ancestors or some of us descended from Christian ancestors, now that we understand what true religion is, and then whatever the pagan taught me have found as a religion, they have only found something as a step closer to right religion. Whatever the Christians have as religion, they only have something that has brought them a little closer to right religion, we know that the real religion for all people is Islam, so we are the descendants of Islam, whether we descended directly from Islamic parents or not, we are descendants, all of us, of Islam because Islam is the natural and pure religion of humanity.
We thank our guests and we hope when they leave here that they will never think of us again except as brothers and sisters. We have many in the Nation of Islam here in America as your brothers and sisters and whenever you are here, please call on us for any assistance that you think we might be able to give you, transportation and anything else. Anything that we can do, we are more than anxious to help our brothers, so we thank you very much.
[applause]
All praise is due Allah. We think we are sometimes the only people who have problems, but when the brother stood up, he let us know that they have problems, similar to our problems. The rule of white supremacy, it has gone all over the world to bring non-whites under their feet. I hope you took notes because the points that were made here and the quotes from the Holy Quran or the references that were given are very good for us to keep.
That was professor, Abdul Rahul Ahmed, the one who was a member of parliament from Pakistan and Professor Tazru Rahman, Professor Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh India.
The brother who accompanied them, was with them as the guide, his name is Kadhi Ahmed, he is a resident here in Chicago. All brothers ministers, we were talking to the ministers on the first of the month on the five pillars or principles of Islam and I think today we should take maybe the rest of the time that we have to teach on the language of the Holy Quran, the religious language, our religious language as it is found in the Holy Quran. We'll begin with a quick review of the five pillars of Islam since you were not here for that meeting we had. I think we should go over that. The five pillars of Islam and then perhaps we will- I think we can do it all in the talk on the five pillars of Islam. Let me see if I can get me a-- Do you have a pencil?
[background conversation]
We will begin with the five pillars of Islam and we get a kind of unique teaching here, a teaching to clear- the biggest problem we have is the problem of language, language problem. You find Muslims who can't get together with each other, there are Muslims of Pakistan that have problems when they try to get together with Muslims of Egypt or some other country. The problem is not Islam, the problem is language. Language is the problem and unless we have our language cleared up, we'll always be divided one against each other, one against the other.
You notice in the talk that the brother gave, he said that Muslims came and established Islam in India before Pakistan came into existence and he said that many of these Muslims who established Islam there, the government ruled there they were traitors. They were people who would just ask a material gain, but nevertheless they were successful, and they got power there, and as a result, there is a nation of Islam in India called Pakistan. After getting power, they then went and suppressed the Muslims. Then Muslims were under their own people, were suppressed by their own people. Bad element came in and got power, it opened up the land to Islam, but it also brought about a kind of tyranny or a kind of slave rule, and they themselves suffered from it.
When they finally got their own parents or slave masters or whatever I want to call it, the exploiters, when they got them off their back and got the British off their back, they embraced Islam and formed the constitution making Allah and Islam supreme over everything else. I mentioned that because that's proves the strength and the purity of Islam. Usually, when people throw a rule, a bad rule off of their back, they throw out everything with that bad rule that was identified with the rule. They throw out the philosophy or they throw out the religion, whatever was used, they throw it out. As it was a case of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russians, the communists threw the Tsar off their back. The Tsar's religion was Christianity, the Russians identified the problem in the religion and they kicked the Tsar and the religion out.
We make mistakes sometimes by thinking that the communists' resentment for religion is a resentment for religion period, but if you read the Communist literature, they attack on Christianity, they don't attack Islam, they attack Christianity. They have Muslims in the communist Russia, don't think there are no Muslim there, there are a million Muslims in Russia, but they don't attack Islam, they attack Christianity. This shows that Islam is not the enemy of freedom, justice and equality. People who are fighting for freedom, justice, and equality, they don't have to fight Islam to win the battle, they only have to fight those forces that are going against Islam. Once they get those forces out, then they have their freedom, justice, and equality which is Islam. I thought I should mention that because it's very important.
When a thief is caught, the first thing he does is point to somebody else. "He stole something too." Judaism and Christianity is in trouble, serious trouble and it's been in serious, serious trouble for some time now. When the communists or some other revolution charges them with importing slavery under the name of G-d or holiness, then they want to say or want the public, get the world to think that this is an attack upon G-d and religion. Instead of admitting the truth, these people are attacking us for being false to G-d and false to religion.
We should admit that we have misrepresented the religion and tell the communist people, "We can't represent G-d anymore, you caught us red-handed." When I look in Islam, that's where you find the strength, that's what they should do, but they won't do that. We have to keep our eyes open as the world would like to deprive us of Islam because they know that Islam is the key to freedom, justice, equality, and strength. You can never be strong without Islam. If any people are strong, it's because they have some measure of Islam.
We look at the communists or the socialists' philosophy and we think that it's something new that man came up with. Mark was a Jew, he got strength out of the scripture and he used it. The socialist philosophy is nothing but an Islamic philosophy, ignoring Allah. In ignoring Allah, some other bad things come into it and we can't say it's Islam, it's not, but the strength of it was Islam. You can't attract people to follow you unless you use Islam. You have to use Islam in some degree in order to attract people. The West, they use G-d, that's Islam in some degree.
The Communist people use social equality, that's Islam in some degree or in some measure. You just can't attract people without having some Islam, you have to force them against their will to follow you, but if you want them to respond willingly, you have to give them some measure of Islam. You read in the Marxist teachings that there is law for the distribution of wealth for maintaining the economy. I believe they say- how it goes now? "The wealth is to be given to the individual according to his needs and he is to in turn give according to his ability or his work."
That's Islam and they give it as some new theory, some new law. The Holy Quran says that, "They ask what should we give in charity, so tell them to give what is not [Arabic word] I can't get the right English word for it. The best word I can get is to give what is not hurting. Mean that don't make yourself a burden for somebody else. Don't throw yourself in the stream and you don't have any boat, and then start hollering, "Somebody come help get to shore." Don't do that. Give enough that you still are able to keep yourself from being a problem on the society, but you're giving. It says, "Give as much as you can without hurting, without suffering."
If everybody did that, what would that bring about? Social equality. If I got enough so that I wouldn't have to be begging the society, and all I got all over there, I began to give it to others, who needs to be brought up, eventually, we have social equality. Is that right? Well, that's the teaching of the Holy Quran. Again, the Holy Quran, it says-- I'm trying to think of the exact words now. "This comes under the marriage law, when you're married. It says, "The dowry-" which is the protection for the wife, "-it should be measured by the amount of wealth the groom has."
If he has more, his dowry should be more. If he has less, his dowry should be less. There's no set amount. Say, the dowry is $5, like in old testament, this is so many, what is this figure? (unclear).. of wheat for this crime or for this thing. So many of this, and so many of that. It says, "According to the mean, right? Right. According to his mean, according to his ability to contribute to his wife. For this rule, they have what we call in Islam, the Sharia, a Jewish [unintelligible 00:29:24] and any rule that's established in Islam can be applied generally.
The same rule that's established for the groom in giving or supporting his bride, in case something happened to him, that she'll have something to fall on, that same rule can be applied anywhere in Islam. If that's done, what would you come up with? You will come up with the basic idea that the Marxists advance and take the credit for it. Now, if it's theirs, let them bring a book. Let them bring a book before the Holy Quran showing that it's there. The one with the first pattern, is the owner of it, is that right? All right. Muslims have the first pattern, so we're the owners of it. All praise is due to Allah. I'm going to convert you atheists, and communists, and whatnot, if it's the last thing I do.
[laughter]
[applause]
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you know how shameful you look, holding onto something and giving praise to something that doesn't deserve it. You put the praise where it belong. All right. We have five pillars called [unintelligible 00:31:10] of Islam, five pillars of Islam. Now, these five pillars represent the strength or the very foundation of Islam, of our religion. If we don't have these five pillars, then we don't have Islam. We don't have what we call Islam. What is the first pillar? The first pillar is belief in Allah. Is that right?
Participants: Right.
The second pillar is the belief in prayer, or we may say, "Worship." The third pillar is belief in fasting, or we may say, "Bringing yourself in accord with divine," or we might say, "Leadership, rule." I will explain this a little more as we go. The fourth we have is Zak?t, or charity, is that right? We call it charity. We may say that this charity can be called a belief in the unity, or the brotherhood, or the community, right? You must also have faith, or belief in the unity of the Muslim brothers and sisters, and the brotherhood of Islam are in the community.
Then we have the fifth belief- fifth pillar, pardon me. They all suggest beliefs. They are pillars, but they suggest beliefs, because how can you say, "I have something as a fundamental principle, a foundation upon which I stand, and I don't believe in it"? So they have in most of these books, they give pillars separated from beliefs, but there's a problem. If you've ever read these books, you have felt the problem because they deal with principles, and it's hard to deal with principles separate from belief, without including principles also as belief, but that's how it's done.
I'm not criticizing to be criticizing, I'm criticizing because criticism is necessary for progress. If we accept everything as the old Muslim world has just found it and has been living it, then we will limit our growth and progress to their growth and progress. We do that and they will remain the leaders and the world might wait a long, long time to see some real Islamic results. All right. Five now, we have what we call Hajj, pilgrimage, Hajj to Mecca. This Hajj now, is a belief, too. It represents a belief in the universality of our social concept.
It's not a social concept, we don't have a community idea, a Nation of Islam idea in America, that can't be established in Europe, or in Asia, or in Isles, or anywhere else on the face of the globe. We have a universal community idea. This community idea can be established all over the world. Why? Because it's equally, akin to, or natural for one man as it is for another. It is equally natural for one continent as it is for another. Because it is universal, there is Hajj or pilgrimage established for Muslims, that Muslims, no matter what the geographic location is, they should all come together yearly as one community, because there is no geographic difference that is worth recognizing as a problem for the unification of Muslims.
There is no problem, we can unify, we can become one efficiently working community, living and working community, without any problems, and we don't have to come up with any nationalism from Africa, any nationalism from America, or any nationalism from Asia, or from the communists, or from the capitalists, or from those who represent the in-between. We don't need any nationalism from them to keep our community growing and progressing. Our community is designed to get the best results, the optimum results, from any people with no respect to them as a different race or a different nationality. This is Islam. It's a beautiful religion. That's why it has survived everything else.
We call it Islam in the name of the new name, but the religion is not a new religion. The Holy Quran says this is the same religion that was given to Abraham. Is that right? All right. It says that Abraham was a Muslim. The Holy Quran says, "We named him Muslim in this book and before this book." We don't have anything new. We have the oldest way that is in the Earth, the oldest way.
If our way is the oldest way, then that is also a proof, a living testimony for its strength to survive. It has survived many other ways, and it's still here. Islam is the only way that exists in its pure form, that survived.
We have as religions, we have Judaism. Judaism has split to become this and that, and Christianity has split up to become this and that, but Islam has remained. They have tried to say that Islam has split up too. When you read books written by western writers, they want to play up the division in Islam that are not religious divisions but divisions of thought. They want the people who read books on Islam to believe that those people who say they're Shiites or Wahhabis are something else, just a denomination like Baptists and Catholics and what have you, which is a false projection.
They're trying to project something that's a lie, it's false. Catholics, they identify themselves as Catholics. They are known as Catholics. As a body they are Catholic. They advance Catholicism and they don't accept people that are not Catholics as being legitimate believers in Christ. Is that right? All right.
The same thing goes for the other denominations. They are a few denominations among the hundreds of denominations that identify with all the rest. They have opened their doors to everybody, but very few. Most of denominations in Christianity, they are really hard and fast division. Is that right?
In Islam when you go to make Hajj, you don't see no delegation with a sign saying, "I'm Wahhabi. I'm Hanbali. I'm Ahmedi. I am a Shiite." You see, you don't see that. Why? Because they know that it's not accepted in Islam.
[applause]
We've got all kinds of infiltrators among us now. Their see they can't destroy us with their weak weapons, then they are feeding up the infiltration, and they are trying to make- causing suggestions to have more power. They are tightening up. As they do that, we have to work harder to keep our poor innocent brothers' and sisters' eyes open. That means we have to work the more harder. Don't think because you make progress that you should rest.
No. When you make progress, brother, tighten up. It's just like a man progressing financially. The more he progresses the more he has to protect himself and his property, because he's just exciting the appetites and the greed of those who want what others have. They don't want to see you with it. They're going to try to come in and destroy it, take it away from you. Be strong. The first pillar is Allah. I wish you to read Muhammad Speaks article because I believe the late teachings on the name Allah is in there. If not this article, if it's not this one, it'll be the next article. Brother ministers, keep up with those articles.
I won't go over everything because if you haven't got it, you're going to get it in the article. We don't want to waste time, we don't have to go over the same territory too many times. I'll just briefly talk on this name. This name is not a new name. If Allah is a name that's new and that came with the Arabian Prophet Muhammad, then how did he get the name Allah? As a baby, he was named Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Muhammad the servant of Allah. Right? His father's name was Abdullah, the slave servant of Allah, now again.
Now that the truth is out here and we're preaching it hard, they can't hide it anymore. The western writers are now admitting this, that the name Allah is an ancient name. It's no new name, it's an ancient name. They say it goes back thousands of years before Muhammad, which tells us that they don't know when it got here. They say Egyptology goes back so many years. That tells us that they don't know when Egyptology began. They just go back as far as they can. 20 years ago they had one historical date for it. 20 years later they come up with another historical date, because they examined the finds there and they say, "No, it's older than that."
[laughter]
As they examine, they have to correct their history, correct their figures. As they study this religion they're going to have to correct everything almost they have said about it.
[00:44:05] [END OF AUDIO]

